


Two Weeks Later (life goes on)

by PlasticBattleAxe



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Character Study, Crooked Kingdom - Freeform, F/M, Kinda poetic I guess???, M/M, Post-Book 2: Crooked Kingdom, Six of Crows, and a little angst with nina, and how they all begin to deal with new lives, anyway ill add tags as i go?, i want to look at what happens after crooked kindom, inner monologue, light fluff with my boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-13 15:09:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19253689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlasticBattleAxe/pseuds/PlasticBattleAxe
Summary: the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single stepthings don't just become okay because a story ends, even a group powerful enough to stop a global war breaking out need time, to heal, to assess, to begin againa chapter for each of the crows beginning life anew two weeks after the events of crooked kingdom





	1. Nina

Nina takes a step forward, stops, takes a deep breath, and focuses on moving one foot after another down the gangplank.

The first thing that hits her is the smell, making her almost stop again just from sheer intensity. Little Ravka in Ketterdam held pieces of it, the freshly baked bread, nectarine jams, rum cakes cooked in wood ovens. But it was nothing compared to the real thing, fresh dew on pines, farmhouses, the sweet smell of burning sugar that always tinted the air.  
but as she breathes she feels her stomach sink just a little. She had expected to smell home. Expected this moment to feel like a joyous return, the completion of a dream she had held so closely since that ill-fated night on the wandering isle. She wanted this so badly to smell like a return, to where she belonged; but as much as she hated to admit it, it smelled more of a familiar memory, a childhood summer, a simpler time, a nostalgia more than that welcoming scent.

This wasn’t home, not anymore, merely a façade of it. Her time in Ketterdam had instilled that in her. While the white rose hadn’t been homely in the slightest (more like a poorly decorated stage) she must have left a piece of herself in those unbearably perfumed halls. She had grown up since the civil war, changed in a million tiny ways over such a long time that she hardly noticed, and the full force of that change hit her now all at once. This was not her world any more, she was no longer the girl she had been.

She keeps moving, holding her small, battered suitcase tighter in her hand as she glances over to the three palace servants who were struggling with Zoya’s enormous amounts of luggage. She scoffs, catches herself. Hypocrite. There would have been a time where she would have had nearly as much to carry around as the squalor, or as much as Genya even. But now a voice inside her that had been conditioned by the dark Kurch alleys, that learned a new way of life from the other end of the law, shrank at the idea of such decadence. She thought like a thief now, like a spy. Such an open display of wealth in Ketterdam would have like written consent for any thug or con man to take his best shot.

Although, Nina supposes, anyone stupid enough to try con Zoya Nazyalensky would be in for a _very_ nasty surprise.

  
The feeling of dry land under her feet after 2 weeks at sea was somewhat jarring, but nothing she wasn’t used to after the canal life she had lived for almost two years. Even here, in the largest port in Ravka, she did not feel as damp as she had in the inland districts of Ketterdam. It was well and truly summer here now, and the blessed, dry feeling of low humidity tells a tale of a different world. The tree leaves tint gold in the late afternoon light, not a cloud dilutes the deep summer sky, a warm breeze warms the back of her neck even so close to the ocean. It would be 5 days by carriage to Os Olta. To the little palace. To her childhood home. It would feel more like her native soil when she arrived there, it would, at least that is what she tells herself. She would eat hot meals, see her old friends, explore her new power. She would begin to feel again, and then, she would begin to feel complete again.

she had dreamed of coming back to these lands many times. In her weaker moments, she ached to leave the damp city, entertained the fantasy of simply leaving the crooked canals behind her, taking all she had earned and cutting off all the alliances she had made, leaving them behind, leaving him behind.  
But if there was one thing her people stood for it was loyalty, a loyalty that been instilled in her by her commanding officers, by her trainers at the little palace, and probably even before then, and she was unashamed to say that it consumed her completely. Nina wasn’t sure she could have left Ketterdam if she tried. It was like Inej said “the heart is an arrow, it demands aim to land true”  
For Nina, the arrow striking its target had never been the problem, Nina had passion, had stamina. No, the problem was that what her heart decided was right, and what she wanted to do, did not always align. Her heart had direction, to deny that, even in imagination, was a useless endeavour.

Still, whenever she had envisioned coming back to Ravka, she never came back alone.

she didn’t look at the stretcher the palace guards carried. Couldn’t make herself. She refused to acknowledge it yet, not completely. it had kept her up at night, made her toss and turn in the first real bed she had slept on in months, she hadn’t been able to sleep almost at all for the first week of the journey. Just as she thought she might actually make her eyes stay closed, She would find herself looking out over the dark water at some unsaintly hour. Mostly she cried, her tears mingling with the salt water of the ocean spray as she wept for the fragments of her broken heart.  
Sometimes she reminisced the shattered dreams of what might have been for her and Matthias. Matthias grumbling at the improper ways of the Ravkan peasants, Matthias seeing her capital for the first time, Matthias at the little palace.

the crying was much preferable.

she would be forced to confront it eventually, to accept the finality of his death and arrange to take him back to his native land. But she didn’t want to muddle the sadness of that homecoming she had wanted for so long.  
She would put her grief aside; at least for a moment.

Nina wasn’t okay yet. This wasn’t yet normal.

But it would be.

 

She pushes onward.


	2. Jesper

Jesper takes a step forward, stops, takes a deep breath, and focuses on moving one foot after another up the creaky wooden stairs that lead back to the bedroom.

He can feel the first rays of dawn creep along the back of his neck. the slight prickle of subtle heat beginning to climb his legs as he tiptoes up the creaking wooden boards. He tries, tries so hard, to maintain the stillness of the early morning. Not to fracture the perfect delicate quietness of the dawn.  
If this was the slat, people would be milling around already. Some still drunk from the night before, some getting ready for early jobs, some who just couldn’t sleep; no matter the reason - the whole place was always alive, always in action, like a bubbling river– ever constant in its flow. Ketterdam didn’t ever really _stop_ , so it followed that nothing was ever really still. Someone was always working, moving, everyone trying to keep up with the eternal pulse of barrel life.

But here, in this house, the silence was as thick as a warm blanket, syrupy and full. Jesper hadn’t realized how much he had missed that stillness. The gentle calm of the mornings hush.

There were different types of silences, he supposed, the awkward lull in a conversation, the buzzing quiet just before a job, the moment of complete noiselessness just before the trigger was squeezed and all hell broke loose.  
  
but the silence he felt now, the serene tranquillity that came with the first sun? Jesper hadn’t felt that silence since he was very, very young. Since Novia Zem. Since quiet farm mornings where his parents had let him sleep in. where he would wake to the smell of freshly baked bread, the heat already pouring in through his bedroom window.  
The silence of lazy Sundays and family and home.

Home.

He supposed that’s what this was now. These wide halls and serene rooms were no longer so foreign. The silence that surrounded this place was a safe thing.

And he was desperate, so desperate not to break it, because he was sure that if he did that feeling of domesticity would shatter with it, that the first sprouts of something with a potential to be wonderful would be crushed under his heel.

He reaches the top of the stairs and rounds the corner slowly, making extra effort to muffle the sounds of his bare feet on the immaculate carpet, minimize the soft pad of skin on cloth.

And that’s when he hears it – the smallest sound breaking the noiselessness here. At first its so slight he thinks he might be imagining it, but no, something is there, something so inherently soft and calm and serene he wonders if he’s been hearing it the whole time, that perhaps the noise had intertwined with this familial quiet so completely, belonged there so fully, that he simply hadn’t noticed it was there.

But there it is, the gentle lull of music,

It's coming from the next door down from the bedroom. The soft whispers of a flute song, simple in its melody – but played with such control. Such practiced ease. He can actually _feel_ the emotion packed into each note as he tiptoes closer, the piece flowing through him like waves – Jesper is transfixed by the swell of the sweet song - full of calm and joy and love. _So much love_. As if each individual note is a prized treasure or a mouthful of a wonderful dessert, held with reverence until its completion.   
As he goes to turn the door handle and pauses; caught in the refrain. Sinking, ensnared in the piece, the eternal itching in his bones falling second place to the melody – and in this moment, this tiny, minuscule piece of time – he is entirely still.

He opens the door to the music room

And Jespers breathing hitches then– because the sight is _beautiful_.

The room isn’t decadent – but it’s certainly full. Instruments line the walls, carefully rested on tailormade wooden shelves. A guitar, a lyre, a chestnut violin. A bookcase near the door is filled wall to wall with books exhibiting sheet music of every kind, every mood for every occasion. A grand piano takes up one corner of the room, the stool pulled out in front of a low burning fireplace, the dying embers making the boy seated in front of them seem to glow red in the first rays of the dawn. The sun has just started to truly make itself known, the first real rays of it making the gold in Wylan’s hair glimmer like a divine thing. He looks like a saint. Someone too perfect to belong of this world. A blooming flower born of thorns.  
  
Wylan is playing his flute, and Jesper realizes now that he’s never, even after all this time, heard Wylan play the thing. He’s never even seen it. it’s silver but not reflective, and it's clearly adored judging by the tarnishing along the keys and the way the musician himself seems to cradle it. Wylan moves with the music he plays, his head dipping and his feet swaying in time to the song he’s creating. And jesper is caught in it all. The serenity and the calm and the knowledge that this is his home, that he’s allowed to be in this place with all of this.

Jesper only realizes he’s sat next to Wylan when the music abruptly stops. Wylan is looking at him, a mix of surprise and delight and worry all meddling on his perfect features.   
Jesper knows he wants to ask him where he’s been all night. What he needed to do. If he’s alright.

But he’s not ready for that. Its too early, the morning to still and good to pollute with that talk. Not just yet.

“keep playing Wylan” he whispers into the silence of the music room. It’s the first worlds he’s uttered for the last 12 hours, and it comes out croakier then he’d hoped. “please keep playing”

Jesper hopes he conveys how sorry he is for leaving last night. How much he wishes that he could just walk away from his old life in Ketterdam. But the barrel stops for no one, and even if that type of business isn’t something he wants to make a habit of – loose ends need to be tied. To keep his life here like it was now, he would need to wrap up properly.

And Wylan? Wylan hears his silence and understands.

He begins to play once more

And they sit there together as the sun begins to come up, dark cast out by the start of a new day. The world waking up around them properly.

 

Jesper wasn’t okay yet. This wasn’t yet normal.

But it would be.

 

they will move onward. 

**Author's Note:**

> updates every Monday, love that sweet sweet kudos and super appreciate comments, ty for taking the time to read :), if you liked this check out my tumblr @plasticbattleaxe - I also post art there sometimes too ((see if you can guess whos chapter will be next ;) ))


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